


Snippet

by the_moonmoth



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-11
Updated: 2005-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:24:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cut scene from a WIP</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snippet

**Author's Note:**

> Eh. Watching Cold Station 12 on sky 1 just now, it occurs to me that I've got some canon about Jon's parents in one of my WIPs completely wrong. Alas. So I can't use that scene anymore, but it more or less stands on its own. TBH, I never really felt that the scene worked, and it probably would've ended up cut, but... I spent a lot of time trying to make it fit, so I'm reluctant to just let it die. It's set during Shuttlepod One, a few hours after Phlox begins his treatment for Trip and Malcolm's hypothermia, and before Malcolm comes around.

After checking our new heading with Travis, I left T'Pol on the bridge and headed into my ready room. Sinking into the chair behind my desk I sat in silence for a while, trying to process events.

After a few minutes I found myself staring at a small leather-bound book lying on the couch. I'd been reading it earlier when T'Pol first showed me the micro-singularity hits to Enterprise, when I first realised the danger Trip and Malcolm might be in. It was my dad's final journal.

Dad kept a journal for as long as I can remember. He was a simple kind of guy when you got down to it, shy and sometimes inarticulate. He hated video logs, hated talking to a cold piece of machinery, as he put it, so he wrote by hand on paper. I accepted it -- with a little bemusement -- putting it down to the eccentricity of genius, but I never really understood it.

Before he died, he gave me his journals. It was several years before I could read them, but eventually I did. I brought a couple with me to Enterprise, for inspiration. I read an entry now and again, when things got quiet.

I had been reading about my mom. Dad was very sick by that point and often slipped away into memory -- sometimes he told me about it, but mostly talking was too painful and so he wrote. In a way, I found it relaxing to read about her. I was still very young when she died and my only memories of her are happy ones.

Getting up, I went over to the couch and picked up the journal, flicking through the pages absentmindedly, my dad's neat handwriting flowing past my eyes.

 _...problem with the containment field generator! Goddamn it, I can't believe they didn't accept this one, after everything we went through with them last time. I know, they have their reasons, and they're right -- there is a risk of interference at certain frequencies, but... would it kill them to help us fix it, this one thing?..._

 _...remembering the time Helen and I took Jonny into hangar eleven at the base, to see Zephram's warp ship. Just four years old and already in love, reaching out to touch the nacelles with such reverence. After that, Helen took him into her workshop, showed him the hull plating her team was making for the new warp two ship. We thought at that time that he might follow us into engineering. Helen, you'd be so proud -- today our son was accepted into flight school..._

 _...and everything hurts. Not being able to talk is particularly hard, on both me and Jonathan, and there's so much to tell him, so much to say. I know, now, that I'm entering my final months. Could be, my final weeks. We're so close with the engine. The Vulcans have approved the specs and construction began last week. I just hope... my one wish is to live long enough to see her fly..._

 _...Helen just smiled and patted my arm in that way she had of saying 'yes, dear, whatever you say' without actually saying it. But she was right, of course, and the damn thing worked better for it. When she came back in she was filthy, covered in grease. I told her she looked beautiful and she said that if I was lucky, she'd let me take her out to dinner later, looking exactly like that. She washed her hands then kissed Jonny and me goodbye and left for work, grinning back at us over her shoulder. I will always remember her, smiling that way, beautiful in the hot sun of that summer. Oh Helen... you never came back. I guess, I'll see you soon..._

Startled, I put the book down, my exchange with Malcolm in the turbolift suddenly coming back to me.

 _'Jon? You... died. I...'_

In all those months, I hadn't once heard Malcolm call any of his superiors by their given names. Not even Trip. I remembered the look on his face -- so bleak, grief-stricken -- and I knew then, that they had thought we were dead.

I stood and went to the window, and tried to imagine how it would feel, to know that my entire crew had perished. I stood there for a long time.


End file.
